


It Rang Like Scriptured Verse

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism)



Series: Price of Forgiveness [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Backstory, Dubious Consent, Evil Double, Explicit Consent, F/M, First Time, Implied Sexual Content, Kink Shaming, M/M, Masochism, Masturbation, Matchmaking, Nightmares, Orgy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Torture, Size Difference, Size Kink, Threshecutioner Karkat, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side-Stories, Back-Stories, fragments and exposition for the grand-scale clown epic, Price of Forgiveness.  More tags, pairings, warnings etc. to be added as the story progresses. </p><p>Chapter VII: The Grand Highblood is Dead (Long Live The Grand Highblood): “No,” says Kurloz, and stands hard and sharp.  “No, this won’t be born.  I’m fucking <em>ready</em>.  Ready to challenge.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tool of Your Destruction [History PREmix] ((T+: sexual content))

The first time Halore Travye saw Kurloz Makara was the night he was conscripted.

He was seven and a half, then, missing his hive and goatdad, everything he owned in his sylladex except his marked up book of scriptures he copied out himself off the church homenet.  The purplebloods were thrown together and then pulled apart, the only caste split and sorted—facepaint in one line, bare-faced shoved without dignity into the other.  One elder of the church, old and heavy-horned, sat up high and watched—the work got left to adults much younger, towering over the others in line with dark skin and powerful build.

Halore never towered, not really, but he didn’t either get shoved or pushed around.  The ones that hit into him bounced off and left him unmoved.  A heavy build, a strong will, a direct and to-the-motherfucking-point attitude, that shit got you far. 

It would have to.

And then he’d looked up, in that uncertain moment, and there was a brother standing tall over him.

“Line to the left, little brother,” he’d said, grinning paint and face of sharp, beautiful angles, and smiled with long, perfect white fangs that could tear out a throat.  “Welcome onboard the _Painted Disciple._ ”

\--

He hadn’t pined for the tall and beautiful brother who directed him to his new life.  There was too much to do.  Too much to do, for days, weeks, perigees, hell, for sweeps even.  He had training, and schoolfeeding, and he didn’t know yet what he wanted his life to be for and that took up the time that might have been spent dreaming.  Maybe once or twice, in the dark in his ‘coon, on hot nights when his pan was buzzing too hard to sleep, he’d imagine…things.  And in among the slick flesh and warm breath there would be a face he knew, not recalling where he saw it.  A tall figure, lean and strong and older and taller, white fangs in a grin that could tear down the moons. 

And then he finally took the schoolfeed on scripture and verse, and things changed.

They’d put him in the further forward scripture feeds, and for that he was grateful, because the early lessons, beneficial as he was sure they fuckin’ were, were a size too small and a shade too basic for a fucker who spent his whole life on-planet reading scripture whenever his time allowed. He felt pleased at himself for all of one day, and then the next night he woke and walked into Advanced Scripture feeding and saw nothing but grown laughsassins in muttering groups, inquisitor faithful gathered around papers and palmhusks, subjugglators taking up their space and telling jokes.  Not a one still small and pale, not a one still waiting on pupation. 

And right up in the back, alone and watching, smiling real small, there was a single face he knew.

Halore had edged up the side of the room past the full-grown kin talking and laughing below, and the brother from conscription day had watched him, still-faced, as he sat down, real cautious, a few seats down the row.

“…good afternoon,” he’d said, real polite.  “…I…figured when I saw you around you were out of schoolfeeding, big brother.”

 “Not anybody alive couldn’t use a little schoolfeeding,” He had said.  “However old they get to be.”

Sounds so true and so fuckin’ wise when he says it like that.  Halore’s cheeks had gone warm, for no reason he had proper words for.

“Some of us could use more than others,” he’d said, and looked down at his feet like he could pretend at not being a dumb-ass wriggler.  “I…I’ll just—I’m gonna—”

“Makara.”

The word made no sense right then.  Halore blinked and then blinked again and then frowned and looked up.  “…what?”

“Makara,” he’d said again, and smiled that same smile, a slice of white fangs.  “Brother Makara.  If you were ever gonna get around to asking a name or making a motherfucking introduction.”

“Travye,” he’d said, after a second trying to remember his own goddamned name.  Brother Makara had smiled, head high and eyes lazy like he had the right to judge whatever fell under his eyes, like he was king of everything he saw, and Halore Travye bowed his head down and looked at his palmhusk with warm cheeks and beating pusher, and didn’t say a word.

\--

Pupation did nothing much about changing Halore Travye, except that he grew, taller and broader still than he had been.  The sweeps were a gradual progression of age and skill and knowledge, a powerful knowing of scriptures. 

A good tutor.

Makara brought scriptures to life.  Makara burned and thundered with scripture like he was reading of his own testimonies, not some long-dead ancient saint, his voice caressed stories of ancient holy serendipity like a lover’s hand and hissed and cut through the books of suffering like torturer’s tools.  Scripture was bright and beautiful, brought to life in his hands.  His sermons lifted the soul.  His voice brought his kin to attention and led them true through danger and fire and back home.  He bled, and led, and came back to the ship and sat down with a brother whose only skill seemed his growing skills in scripture verse, solid power and a dependable word.

It was obvious, he found out, to the right people.  Obvious who he wanted and how badly.  Every ship has some matchmakers, their rumor-mills.  Any other ship, they would have been buying and selling to anybody interested, but they were kin and on the church vessels the point of knowing was to get as many little brothers and sisters and kin together as they could, before contribution rolled around. 

But there were better matches for him, they told him—there were dark rumors about brother Makara, things that a brother just-pupated wouldn’t handle so well.  Always picking his contribution-mates from the newest kin off-planet, always turning them out and never returning to the same one again. 

“…just be careful around him, brother,” a sister had said, and pulled up her sleeves to show eight neat scars, white and clear, four on each arm.  Claws digging at flesh.  “Good brother as he is, he does…play rough.”

\--

But Halore Travye was tough, and he was young and jumped up on stupid motherfucking hormones and hope, and he wasn’t scared of pain, so he sat down that day, and with a prayer and a firm hand, he made up his mind.

So he’d come into scripture the next night, and gone up to the back where he always sat.  Makara was there—Makara was always there first.  He’d asked once how fucking early a brother even had to be, and Makara had just looked at him and then smirked to himself and looked back to the front again.  Halore sat and pulled his palmhusk out to pull his books up on, and then with everything done, just…sat.

“…good afternoon to you too,” Makara had said finally, quiet and amused.  “What’s gone crawling up your nook?”

“Fuck you,” Halore had said, because that was the thing to say when somebody was being a motherfucking bulge-sniffer at you, even if you’d spent yesterday distracted with the thought of them pinning you over the desk and putting their lips to your throat.

“Fuck _you_ ,” Makara had said back with no malice, and pulled a wicked elixir from his sylladex.  “…you heard there’s a party coming up?”

Conversation, for some dumbfuck reason, had not been part of Halore’s plan of how this night would go.  He floundered a little—but there was only one way to react to a party, and to be motherfucking honest the thought was pretty goddamn exciting even through the nerves. 

“You don’t sound pleased, brother,” he’d said, and taken the bottle Makara passed him.

Makara had snorted.  “— _wader_ party,” he’d said, disgusted.  “Our lordship’s gone inviting saltsuckers on holy fleet.”

  Well _fuck_ that noise. 

Makara laughed at the look on his face—rare to hear him laugh for real, but that half-laugh, low and quiet, that was wonderful too.  “Yeah,” he’d said.  “…’s what I figured.  That’s how the whole fleet’s got to feeling about it, but fuck does he know about what we want?  Never comes out the Big Top, does he?  Heard he sleeps on the throne—”

“Brother…”

Makara blinked—caught himself.  Sighed and then growled.  “I know. I fuckin’ _know_.  Not treason to say what’s true, any-fucking-way.”

Halore hadn’t answered that with words, but he did give a stern looking-at and Makara sighed again and let go some of the bristling anger that used to get to him when he talked too long about the current Mirthful Majesty. 

“…fine,” he’d said.  “I’ll shut my motherfucking trap.  Not like he’s spying though.  Fucker doesn’t care enough what we think to do shit like that.”

There was silence a while after that.  Brother Makara was brooding, glaring ahead and thinking deep.  Halore was…distracted. 

“So,” he’d said, finally and quiet.  “You…you got any quadrants?  For this week, I mean.”

Makara had rolled his eyes—old song and dance.  “You know fucking well I don’t.”  He sat back a little—rolled his shoulders, and there’s a fog of want, constant and barely-there, in the air before contributions rolls around.  Halore watched his shoulders work and the muscles of his back bunch and stretch and his mouth was so fuckin’ dry.  There was subtlety and words unsaid there— _they’re still whispering about me, I don’t want to pick another one of the wrigglers who just got off-planet, that shit is so fuckin’ creepy, if I got out of caste I’ll never live it down—_ harder to read, every sweep.  Brother Makara locked up when he was worried, and knowing that felt precious and private. 

And that’s why he asked.

“Hey,” he says, as Makara looked off far away and thought.  “…we could hook up, brother.”

Brother Makara had smiled a little, distant, and gone to shake himself awake, and then there had been a single, slow moment as the words he heard went through to his thinkpan.  He went still.  He’d made at opening his mouth to speak, but it came out silent—the first time Halore would see him lose track of his words, but not the last.  For a long couple moments they just stared at each other, and of course he wouldn’t want to, of fucking _course—_

“If that’s a no, I mean, I get it brother, if you got—” he’d started, and he’d remember the rest of his life how brother Makara had nodded so slow, and how he’d looked just short of scared.

\--

“ _Kurloz,_ ” he’d breathed that morning, close by his ear, and it had been such a beautiful thing, the trust uneasy in his voice, the feel of his body working so close, the heave of his breath and the power in his shoulders…the pain of his claws digging in still burned, still hurt, but if Halore was good at something it was enduring, and he closed his eyes and endured the pain and loved until it hurt.  “ _My—name, m’name’s Kurloz—_ “

\--

He’d always used his claws a touch too deep, like he didn’t even notice it happening—took him a long, long time to say the words out loud, but Halore knew.  He saw it happen, stored what he saw away behind his eyes and never asked why when he let himself let himself whimper and pushed into the hurt till his eyes flashed white he’d come back and see Kurloz looking down at him like he was a wonder, like he was a miracle, like he was the center of all that ever was.  He’d been so young.  They’d been so young, and he’d thought he was being kind.

And when Kurloz got out the words _hurting, I got too powerful a love for it, I’m fucked up and for that I owe you some mighty words of apology_ , Halore said “I know.” And watched the wonder in his eyes and wanted to give him everything he’d ever wanted.

For sweeps they’d come together and apart again—lingering together a while after contributions were done until there was no excuse not to anymore, getting together days in advance— _it helps during contribution if your body gets warmed up to it slower,_ one of them had said, earnest in a shadow off a hall, and their kisses tasted like blood and words neither of them would say. 

Kurloz hurt.  Never enough, never as much as he wanted, that was clear.  He’d let go his dignity and cool distance, sit on the ground by Halore’s chair as he read and kiss his fingertips and bite his palms and his wrists until there were tiny, burning cuts on his skin and he was boneless from the attention, the pure motherfucking worship in the way those bigger, harder hands held his so gentle and the way scarred lips wrapped around the bones of his wrist.  Kurloz hurt and watched and cared—when Halore reached his limit of enduring whatever pain was being done and cracked a moan not of pleasure, Kurloz would pull back that second, eyes searching, hands hovering to soothe what he’d done. 

…because there was a softness, always, under ever-growing walls of blank mask and cool calculation Kurloz was building around himself—there was a warmth that wanted fingers entwined and promises for forever.  He would hurt and hurt with eyes full of hunger and then kiss and soothe and clean the wounds so carefully.  So motherfucking carefully.  However long it took for the shaking to ease away he would be there, a big hand on Halore’s back, fingers in his hair, a voice saying _you’re so good can’t believe I’m blessed with you you did so good, you looked so beautiful…_

And after sweeps coming and going, knowing the tiniest things about him—when he was silent because he had nothing to say and when he’d locked up inside, when he was hurting and when he was just mad, when he was going to do something that would hurt really bad and it was time to take the pills before they got together—after all that time Halore had thought to as _what do you really want to do_? 

Alone, in Kurloz’s block, as he cleaned his face to paint it again, and the sight of that bare, silver-black skin would never not be the most beautiful motherfuckin’ miracle. 

“You know what I want.”

“Yeah but…other stuff.”  He’d smiled—always, as the younger of the two, pushing to be daring, trying to show off how cool a brother was with the kinky shit.  “Dirty stuff.”

He hadn’t answered for a long time, just fixing up his face, wiping up the corners, making sure every last smudge was gone.  His face was so still, still like it never got unless there was a fight going on behind it and Halore waited silent to see if he’d win.

“It’s…”

He’d been nervous, and that was the thing about Kurloz, when truth came to truth—that he’d been hurt, that he’d been scorned and pushed off and told what he wanted was wrong, and Halore should have known, should’ve known, should’ve _known._   “It’s…fucked up.  Shouldn’t want…” he’d threaded together his fingers and let them loose again, over and over, a twitch he does when the words aren’t coming, when he can’t find them in his pan.  His face was bare and he was precious and wanted and beloved, and Halore watched him and waited and ignored the boil of dread in his insides at the thought of what this beautiful, fucked up troll could think was more fucked up than what he already wanted.  “… _I mean,_ ” Kurloz had said, real quiet, “… _don’t wanna hurt a motherfucker too bad, ‘s just a…fucked up pailing fantasy some days, is all…_ ”

And that was when it had all broken.

“I can bear it,” Halore had said, and the words would stay with him the rest of his nights, the way Kurloz had gone still and he’d been too blind, too _stupid_ to notice.  “I could bear anything for you.  Bore the rest okay.”

“…you make it sound…mighty motherfuckin’ unwanted,” he’d said, and there was a keenness in his eyes, like he was putting something together in his pan—things he’d seen, maybe, and ignored, things he’d trusted were nothing to think on rearing their ugly heads again. 

“No—no that’s not what I’m saying, brother, listen—” but the shaky hastiness of the answer was an answer itself, and Kurloz had been long at the top of inquisition, he knew a damning answer when he heard one.  Even then, you couldn’t lie to Kurloz Makara.

“You tell me _straight to my fuckin’ face,_ ” he’d said, and his eyes were starting a slow burn, realizing, coming to know and understand and too bright.  Too wet.  “Do you like it.  When I motherfuckin’ hurt you.”

There wasn’t a way out.  Not one he could take, not one that would take him through the other side unharmed.  Halore would always wonder, long into the future, if he could’ve lied then, how would it have gone?  Would he have been believed?

He put his eyes on the ground, and shook his head.

Kurloz stood up like he couldn’t bear to stay still, walked three short steps away and three back, breathed hard and deep through his teeth.  He was moving his mouth, silent, staring—couldn’t find the words.  Of course not, it would be a shock, they never really talked about it, but—

“ _But,_ ” Kurloz had forced out, one sharp, brittle word, “—why?”

“Because—because I love—”

“Don’t.  SAY IT.”  His voice had cracked out like a whip, sharp and fast and harsh.  The exact sound of it, still clear after a hundred sweeps in memory, still brutal in its clarity.  The words still coming in fits and starts, but faster now, louder. “You said—I thought—all those times, those times I said I was coming down, I got there and you were fucked-up high, fuck, what, so you could— _bear_ my touching you?  Because I was a fucking torturer to you!”

“It’s just a little pain—I want to make you happy, if that’s what it takes then I’ll—”

“I THOUGHT I WAS DOING RIGHT BY YOU!”  He’d slammed fists against the metal, barely making words, and he’d been— _feral,_ wild, and worst of all was under the fury was nothing but pain.  “You told me you—you said you _liked—_ fuck!”

“I can take it!” Halore had said again, again and again, and it’s so clear now how much worse every word made the betrayal hurt—how much deeper he was digging himself into his grave.  “If it’s you, I could take it, I could stand whatever you—”

“I don’t want you to motherfucking _BEAR MY TOUCH like some motherfucking TRIAL!!”_ Kurloz’s voice had cracked, and his face was bare and it was terrible, then.  It was too much to take and live.  His voice shook, dropped down and quieted to a murmur.  “… _I wanted you to love me,_ ” he’d said, and there was a terrible betrayal, deeper than any wound Halore could have put on his flesh.  Deeper, he knew then in one terrible moment, than he could ever heal.  “I wanted you to—I—and how much of it was a lie, Halore?  HOW FUCKING MUCH?”

And for once, there were no words.  Kurloz held his eyes a long, painful minute…and then dropped them.  Shrank and crumbled down, sitting slumped on the ground in the wreckage of his block.

“ _Leave,_ ” he’d said, so quiet, almost a plea.  “ _…leave._ ”

And he’d gone.

\--

Gamzee Makara is what he never was. 

In a lot of different ways.  He’s young, maybe even a little younger than Halore was when he first hesitantly proposed _just a hookup, brother, no hard feelings after._ He looks like Kurloz, and with that name and that sign and his face so much the same it makes Halore’s pusher skip to see him in sermon.  Wrong though.  Brighter, more smiling, open and sweet where Kurloz was only ever guarded and still.  Young Makara was the talk of the fleet after Kurloz—after the Grand Highblood—caught him high out of his mind on sopor and screamed at him for a good hour before throwing him into detox, but still he excels in fighting, in stealth, in preaching, in…scripture. 

Scripture was Halore’s, once.  It was what he was good at, what made him stand out above and be more.  Brother Makara has studied them a hundredth of the time and somehow yet they've made motherfucking hive inside him.  He knows them forward and back.  he lights them up like Kurloz did, once. 

When the whisper goes around that little brother Makara has made a group of his kin witness to his love of pain, that he’s got a matesprit that hurts him and he can’t get enough, there’s a terrible, sick certainty in the pit of Halore's gut, a knowing he denies for as long as he can.  It’s impossible, he tells himself.  Finding your own descendant, that enough would be a stretch.  But to find him with a twisted thinkpan so complementary to yours, so well-fit, and him so much younger than you—no.  Kurloz wouldn’t.  He knows better than to let the young take up with him, he knows how greedy and hungry for power they are  In the end, they come back around to favors asked and liberties taken and betrayal.  Wouldn’t take up with such a young wriggler, with his own  _descendent,_ how would they even come to meet? 

There are so many ways, he knows, but he denies and ignores and pretends they don’t exist until the day they come down on him and can’t be ignored anymore.

Kurloz is deep flushed for this boy, and it hurts, and it rages _I WANTED IT MORE HE JUST FELL INTO THE GREATEST THING I ALWAYS WANTED HOW FUCKING DARE—_

Maybe he squeezed a little too tight Gamzee’s throat, tighter than he’d meant, with Kurloz standing there judging between the two of them.  Maybe he'd remembered again how fucking _badly_ he wanted what he thought he'd come to peace with sweeps and sweeps ago. Maybe he was afraid and furious and made aware again of pain he thought he’d done with.  But when Kurloz goes pushing past him without another look, bending over his matesprit and his shoulders shake and his growl rises in fury, when Gamzee grabs his arms and looks over his shoulder at Halore—

His eyes say _leave._ His eyes say _I don’t want him to hurt you._

Halore goes.


	2. A Complete Shipwreck ((T+: sexual content))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking place during the events of Chapter 5--after Gamzee's first mission and just before Karkat and Gamzee meet each other again on the Dark Carnival. At this point Karkat is newly-promoted to Grand High Threshecutioner, and is still 100% convinced that he's imagining the amount of sexual torment the Condesce is putting him through, because he's obviously a pervert who is reading too far into the way she keeps having him come sit on her lap and strip off his shirt to give her footrubs.
> 
> Obviously.

“…you ever have a purpleblood frond?”  says the empress, and opens her mouth.  You take your cue and hold out a candied beetle—she leans forward and for a second her lips brush your fingers and your skin electrifies.  She leans back again and swallows, licks her lips with a black, slick tongue.  “…down on-planet, I mean.  You talk about him swimtimes, don’cha? Clam...somefin.”

You are in the Condesce's personal quarters--in theory, guarding her while she works, but in practice sitting in her lap barefoot and feeding her candy on demand, which is thrilling and embarrassing as fuck.  She fucking _loves_ embarrassing you.  You think maybe she knows full well what kind of misplaced, disgraceful thoughts go through your head when she has you do things like this, and thank god she seems to find them funny, not insulting or presumptuous (by all rights you should be culled by now). 

“Uh…” it’s weird to think about home—about before you were out, when you knew in theory you’d have to learn how to suck it up and be polite to people and kick ass in actual fights and not just alone in your block.  It doesn’t take long to remember though.  “…yeah.  I mean—yes, your Condescension.  Ma’am.  Uh…Gamzee Makara.  That's...that was his name.” 

The familiar slight twinge rolls through you at the thought—you do your best to lock it the fuck away, because you are a goddamn THRESHECUTIONER, okay, you are tough and boss as hell and you don’t have time to feel concern for sopor-addicted idiots who are 100% _definitely_ too…. _nice_ to have lasted.  He’s got to be dead by now.  There’s no point thinking about the dead.  Not even the dead whose husktop must have been stolen by some asshole and whose trollian icon still blinks on and off sometimes like he’s still online. 

“…Clamzee,” she says, contemplative.  “…mm.  Yeah, you’ve said the name before.  You know a lot aboat him?”

The sharp snort comes out before you have time to stop it.  “—he was a _mess,_ ” you say, much more baldly than you mean to.  “—sorry.  I mean, he was—”

“No, I asked,” she says.  “I wanna hear your roepinion, not a bunch of political hoofbeast ship.  Brutal-honest.”

“I…o-okay.”  You square up your shoulders, take a deep breath.  “—he was a degenerate.  Like, a complete shipwreck.  He couldn’t go five seconds without calling me his— _best friend_ or some shit, even though I was never anything but a raging sack of bulges to him.  He ate sopor slime like it was candy.  And…the weird cult bullshit didn’t help too much, it, uh…pissed me off.  But he trolled me every night.  His lusus was never there and every time we talked it was like I’d say some basic fact or mention some _basic fucking amenity_ and he’d be like ‘haha best friend I ain’t ever even get my _know_ on of that shit’—!”

You’re breathing a little harder.  You settle down. 

“…he’s probably dead now,” you say, rough and tired.  “He wouldn’t have lasted on the fleet.  I’d be surprised if they didn’t cull him the second they found out about the sopor thing.  Poor fucker.”

“…you figure he coulda ship-shaped up?”  She’s looking at you—you don’t dare to look at her head-on and see what her expression is.  “…coulda got it together if he had somebody to shellp him out?”

“I mean…” you imagine the blurry webcam pictures of Gamzee that are your only real memory of his face—the big, sad eyes, the slightly hopeless smile he always had plastered over his face, like he was really hoping somebody would be nice to him this time but he wasn’t holding his breath for it.  “…I mean, _anybody_ would have been better than him being alone all the time.  He got fucked over, okay?  I mean, it sounded like he was still a pretty good highblood in some ways, he could lift driftwood bigger than me after the storms, and it sounded like he was really into their fucked up church, he just needed to get his fucking _life_ together.  I told him _all the fucking time_ he needed to sort his shit out, but he never got off the sopor and that was the important part.  I mean how _fucking hard_ is it to just not shove weird chemicals in your mouth?!”

You glance at her, and she’s grinning at you.  Your cheeks go hot.

“…he’s dead now, anyway,” you mumble, like a defense, and hunch down.  “…nobody can…can fucking help him now.”

“I sea.”  

For a little while after that you’re both silent.  She’s chatting with somebody on her tiaratop, you think—there’s a certain flicker to her eyes that suggests she’s reading invisible writing, her lips move a little as she dictates words in her head.  Then, finally, she blinks and focuses on you again.

“…I’m goin’ over there, is all,” she says glibly.  “…wanna come with?”

“…’over there’?”

“Get on up, threshie,” she says, and stretches.  Her rumble spheres are pushed abruptly out at the level of your eyes—you jump up faster than you ever have in your life, face burning.  “Tell them to get my shuttle set.  We goin’ to the Dark Carnival.”

\--

You stand outside the Grand Highblood’s throne room on guard for all of five or ten minutes after the empress goes in—nobody comes by.  It’s pretty late in the day already, hell, you’re surprised he’s up and in his throne room at all considering.  You stand and look straight ahead, straining your sponge clots, but you can’t hear what’s happening behind you.  The doors are massive and muffle all the sound from inside—fuck though, they look fucking _ancient—_

Just as you turn your head to glance back at the doors, they go flying open.  They slam against the walls on the outside with a thunderous _CRACK_ , and you jump back as the empress comes striding out, talking at the tops of her aeration sponges. 

“Karcrabby!”  She looks around and then spots you and goes for you like a shark after prey.  “We headed out to get a drink, and _you_ comin’ too!”

You open your mouth to give some kind of respectful and careful answer to that, and then glance back past her and almost choke on your own tongue. 

You’ve seen the Grand Highblood before, but only from a distance and certainly never looming over you and looking directly at you.  Fucking hell he has to be at least eight or nine feet tall.  At fucking _least._   _Without_ the horns.  His face is painted into a jagged, skull-like leer.  Behind the paint, you can make out the shape of sharp, carved features , eyes way too sharp to belong to some faygo-swilling church-chump and a complete lack of interpretable expression.  His horns are huge, spiraled and scarred and battered, and he’s a lot…thinner than you expected, but that’s just because he doesn’t seem to have a spare ounce of bounce-tissue on his whole body.  Holy shit. 

You stare at each other silently for the space of five painful, terrifying seconds, and then a vaguely familiar voice bellows _“—KARKAT!”_ and you’re suddenly slammed right off your feet by a blur of grey and purple. 

Your first reaction is to thrash, swear, and try to pull your sickles, but a few seconds later your brain catches up with you a little and you see big, wide purple eyes and a huge grin and something seems to slot into place in your thinkpan.

“Wait,” you get out, and he literally _lifts you off your feet_ like a wriggler and swings you around.  He barely seems to be squeezing but it’s significantly more difficult to breathe with his hands wrapped around a significant portion of your thoracic cage.  “—hold the fuck up, just—” he squeezes—you huff out a sharp breath of air and squirm.  “—are— _Gamzee_?”

You know you’re right, because he lights up like a goddamn 12th Perigee’s Eve decoration.  “Best friend!”  He stops holding you out in front of him by your thorax, which is theoretically good, but trades it out for wrapping you up in a fucking _cartilage-snapping_ hug.  “Hey!  Oh my god, ain’t this the happiest motherfuckingest miracle you ever did saw, holy shit!”

The feeling of the word _miracle_ making your teeth grind is so familiar it makes your ganderbulbs prickle pathetically even as you’re rolling them hard enough you could probably perform a self-lobotomy and never have to think about this idiot again.  “It is _not_ a—”

Your eyes go up past him over his shoulder for just a second—the Grand Highblood is still staring at you with unwavering intensity.  His expression doesn’t seem to have changed an inch.  He’s not moving in a threatening way or growling or anything, but…he’s just…staring.  You come to the quiet but abrupt conclusion that badmouthing miracles in front of the head of Gamzee’s bullshit church might not be a smart idea. 

“…sure,” you say, really carefully.  “…sure, fine, whatever the fuck you want to call it, you pan-leak.”

Gamzee makes a ridiculous joyful croon and cuddles you even harder.  Half the time you’re enveloped in a mess of shaggy hair or you have your face squished up against his (bare, what the fuck?) chest, but the other half of the time you keep an eye on the Grand Highblood and, finally, he moves.  Turns to the empress and says something very, very quietly.  He turns without waiting for her to answer, and leads the way back behind the old, thick doors, pulling them shut behind him.

A few seconds of tense wondering later, Gamzee apparently decides his new plan is to literally hug you to death, and you have to punch him in the thorax a couple of times to even get him to notice you can’t get any air.  He lets go reluctantly, but only enough to shove his arms out in front of him and dangle you at the ends of them like a meowbeast.

You look each other over properly for the first time since he noticed you, and holy shit.  Holy _shit._   Wasn’t he pretty small before?  Like, taller than you, sure, but not _that_ much.  You thought he must have been dead for sure, but instead here he is, wide-eyed and bare-faced and grinning like an idiot.  There are new scars scattered across his skin, which he is showing a ludicrous amount of, and little silver and gold piercings in his ratty fins—and shit, he’s got _studs_ in his horns!  How the _fuck_ did Gamzee Makara end up with _horn studs_ of all things?  Right at the bases of them, too—you saw a big, scarred up old brownblood get one the other day out near the tip of his horn and he just about threw up.

“Holy shit,” you say, because what else is there to say, really, and stare at the way his hands cover massive chunks of your uniform.  “You got fucking _enormous_.  Fucking hell.” 

He ducks his head all shy and shit like you paid him a compliment, and then looks back up at you and grins even wider again.  “Best _friend,_ ” he repeats, and pulls you back in to squeeze you again.  His bare skin is cold against yours—why the fuck is he half-naked?  And if it comes to that…

 “Why aren’t you—ngh—why aren’t you wearing your paint?”  You ask, and he goes suddenly still, grip slackening a little.  “I thought on this ship for sure you’d be wearing—”

He drops you. 

Just drops you on the ground like a sack of rocks, and you twist in midair and only just manage not to hit the ground ass-first.  Gamzee is turned away from you, hunched over, and you can see his long ears going purple right to the tips.  You get back up on your feet painfully, opening your mouth to demand what the FUCK he thought he was doing just then—but then all of a sudden voices rise so loud behind the door even the thick metal can’t damper them.  You and Gamzee both turn to look—he’s turned at an awkward angle and when you try to lean to get a look at him, he turns even further away.

The empress sounds pissed off about something.  You can’t hear much—Gamzee probably hears more, with ears like those—but you catch the word _mutant_ and your pusher sinks.  Fuck.  Goddammit, you figured she’d already dealt with anybody whose opinion might sway her, but if the Grand Highblood wants you culled your odds aren’t great.  _Fuck_.  Why the hell did you figure it was a good idea to come here?  What kind of _dumbass_ was past you, anyway?  FUCK.

Gamzee makes a tiny noise next to you.  You blink and glance at him, and then frown—his head is still bowed, but now his whole body is in on it, huddled in on itself.  There’s a slight tremor to his shoulders.  You can see a glimpse of his face and he doesn’t seem to notice—his eyes are wide, staring down at the ground in front of him.

“…Gamzee?”  you say, and he doesn’t seem to notice.  “…you don’t think they’re pissed off at you, right?  I’m pretty fucking sure—Gamzee?”

He jumps and looks up.  The shaking is getting worse, in his hands and his legs.  His ears are pinned back in something like fear, but his fins are flared—you know from what you’ve seen of the empress and her seadwellers facing off in politics that fins flaring are usually response to a threat, but he doesn’t look like he’s ready to fight somebody.  He looks…terrified.

When he notices you looking at him he smiles, but it’s not very convincing.  He covers his face a second later, turning away from you again.  His cheeks are blotchy purple.  “Sorry,” he says, late and too loud.  “—I spaced out.”

Something is going on here.  You stare at him harder and this time you don’t just look at how much taller he looks, the old scars on his skin—you see fading bruises and the subtle dullness of bandages in the dim light, darker raw patches on his back that look painful and half-healed.  The flush is fading away from his face and fins now—his arms drop to wrap around him defensively as you look at him, like he wants to hide from your eyes. 

“That wasn’t ‘spaced out’,” you say, and he winces, huddling down in on himself.  The shaggy mess of his hair falls in his face, hides his eyes from you.  “Gamzee, are you, uh…are you okay, man?”

“I’m fine!” he says, too fast and too loud, and he jerks back and turns like he’s going to run away.  You grab his arm and he makes a sharp, terrible noise and tugs at your hand.  He should be able to pull away with no effort whatsoever—he can’t seem to remember how.  His hands shake and jerk and tremble erratically, his fingers are curling to show his claws.  When you look closer, they’re round and ragged.  Somebody chopped them off.

“Gamzee,” you say, honestly fucking freaked out now, and he stills for a  second at the sound of his name before starting to struggle again, still not hard enough to get away but harder than before, breathing sharp and ragged.  “Gamzee!  Whoa, you need to, uh—you need to sit down or something—fuck, what’s going on with you?!  You look like shit!” 

Gamzee jerks—jerks again, weird, seizure movements—jerks a third time, and this time a hoarse, awful sound snaps out of him with the movement— _HA—_ HAHA! And he’s laughing, gasping, wailing laughs that sound more like screams than laughter, clutching at his thorax where one of the bandages wraps around, shaking his head convulsively.  You start to say something, to shout for help maybe, fuck, you don’t know—and then he crumples forward and hits the ground and you forget what the fuck words even are.  He’s laughing so hard his eyes are watering, so hard it comes out in hoarse sobs, and you think he might be trying to make words somewhere in there but god only knows what they’re supposed to be. 

You don’t know what the fuck you’re planning to do, but it’s not logical thinking driving you when you reach out and cup his face in your hands, stroking his wet cheek feverishly as his laughter turns to sobbing and then to snarls and then back to laughter again.  His eyes stare right through you, pinprick pupils and yellow-orange sclera, and when you trace a thumb awkwardly along the arch of his cheekbone his breath catches for just a second and he gasps in a breath.  Another one.  His shaking hands rise a little, starting to reach for you—

“What the FUCK is going on here?!”

A huge hand closes like a steel trap around your arm and tugs you up so hard it almost lifts you off the ground.  Gamzee wails as your hand jerks away from his face, thrashing, trying to reach out after you, and the Grand Highblood’s grip on you loosens just enough for you to dive forward and grab Gamzee again, cup his face in your hands and shoosh him.  He gasps at your touch and then dives toward you and clings. 

The Grand Highblood’s hand takes your wrist, tensing like he wants to pull you away—he hesitates and you squeeze Gamzee and glare up at him. 

“Something happened,” you say, and the empress appears next to him, brows furrowed.  You address it at her, not him—he’s purple in the ears and they’re both breathing hard.  There’s considerably more emotion in his face than when he was just staring at you—worry, mostly.  It sits weirdly on his grotesquely-painted face.  “He started laughing really fucking hard and fell over all of a sudden, don’t know what he was laughing about—or what the _fuck_ happened, but I’m not hurting him, okay?!  Holy fuck—”

“ _Karkat._ ”

You jump at the sound of your name and then turn back to Gamzee—he’s still staring past you, through you—but his hands have come up toward you and as you lean in they find the front of your uniform and clench there, shaking.  Those hands that were big enough to hold you up without an effort seem delicate when they fist up trembling handfuls of your jacket.  You can’t help yourself to save your life—you lean in and hum stupid, broken fragments of comforting words to him, pet his tear-streaked cheeks and his twitching ears and the sides of his throat as it works around guttural, tiny sounds. 

His eyes come back to the present, eventually.  He blinks and breathes deep and hard and his eyes refocus on you and the hallway around him and the Grand Highblood crowding in next to you possessively, staring at Gamzee with absolutely idiotic amounts of concern.  Right, you forgot.  Clowns.  “family”.  Creepy as shit.

Gamzee glances over at him too, and all of a sudden his face crumples again, his eyes well back up.  “no,” he says, half a sob, “—please don’t—” and one hand leaves your thorax to reach out to the Grand Highblood, shaking.  Don’t?  Don’t _what_?  If he tries to—god, to _cull_ him for this or something—you’ll—

The Grand Highblood leans in close to your back, reaches out a hand and cups Gamzee’s face in one big palm, as gently as any serendipitous goddamn quadrant. 

Your brain comes to a screeching halt.  Gamzee shudders and gasps and then takes a breath, and another, settling.  The words come again, faster now.  “Don’t,” he says again, “— _don’t,_ don’t, m’okay, please, fuck— _don’t l-look at me like—l-like that…_ ”

“Holy shit,” you hear yourself say distantly, and lean forward away from the cold, broad chest that’s weirdly close to your back, which has the added bonus of pressing you up against Gamzee and letting him wrap himself around you.  You think it helps his shivering.  “Holy shit, _what the fuck—_ “

“ _Little one, you’re out now,_ ” says the Grand Highblood softly.  His voice is so fucking deep it seems to make your bones thrum, and right now it’s ungodly warm and soft, indecently gentle.  If you didn’t know better, you’d almost think he sounds…pitying.  But that’s not right, so your only option is to conclude that clowns are weird fucking exhibitionists and leave it at that.  “You’re safe, _and they’re all being paid in full for what they motherfucking dared to do—_ ”

Your thinkpan flashes to the scars and bandages, the hysterical sobbing laughter.  “What?”  You pull back a little, and good fucking god, your thinkpan actually bumps against the Grand Highblood’s jaw, he’s sitting so close.  You feel 100% unfuckingsafe.  “What are you talking about?  What happened?”

Then you realize how interrogative and sharp that sounded and flinch forward, half-expecting those teeth that are so close to you to sink into your throat.  He doesn’t even seem to hear you.  That big, scarred hand traces Gamzee’s cheek almost tenderly and wipes away tears—tucks some of his wild hair out of his eyes. 

“ _What is there I can do?_ ”  he asks, and Gamzee closes his eyes and sighs and shakes, and the words echo and repeat in your head and you are beginning to think you’re in way, way over your head.  “ _…what is there I can do to fix this?_ ”

 


	3. Pain is a Sacrament (Orgasms are Miracles) ((T+: sexual content))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Kurloz38 on tumblr, who asked for the story of Gamzee learning about his love for pain and how that was perceived by everybody else.

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you’re five and a half.

You just broke your finger.

Sure is busted as fuck, you figure, and turn your hand around and look at it, how it sits wrong against the others, all swelled up and crooked.   Don’t feel so bad though.  Feels all…sharp.  Pounding.  When you try at moving your frond, it makes hot stuff shoot out through your bones and your whole body gets to feeling all kind of…weird.

You search on your husktop, shivering up and down you when your snapped finger drags or twitches, _WhAt DoEs A bRoKeAsS fInGeR fEeL lIkE?_

 _Well probably_ pain, _dumbass,_ is the first thing that pops up, and you look at the miracle answer and run your other hand’s fingers real slow over that one, thinking.  _Broken bones_ hurt _._  

Well if that’s what it feels like, hurting, you don’t see as how other motherfuckers got a problem with it.  Feels…nice.  Weird.  But it makes parts of you do shit you don’t understand and that ain’t ever sat too well with you, so you tie your finger to its brother next to it to keep it still, and the hurting eases after a couple pies and goes right gone again after a couple nights. 

\--

You’re six and a half, and a handful of perigees out from conscription, when the hormones and shit your body’s trying to turn out start to slam through even the sopor.  You see shit on the sidebars of the videos of bright lights and colors you like on your husktop, shit that makes you stop and look.  Long lines of backs, open softness of mouths, sweet swell of rumble-spheres, hungry fangs and claws with spades in the titles. 

The first time you click one you watch with eyes wide and mouth open.  You watch them snap at each other and when one sinks fangs in deep and comes away with teal blood on her fangs your insides do something powerful strange. 

You learn a fuckload about your body you didn’t rightly know that first day—watch them sink their fangs and claws in and your hand finds your belly and drags over it points-first, soft and scared and then harder, _harder._   You leave purple lines across your flesh. 

You’re worked up and panting by the time that first one ends, and it’s by the second one you listen at what your body wants and drag your pants off, scramble to get between your legs and just about howl at what you find there, pant and twitch and shudder.  On the screen matesprits twine up around each other and you watch them through wet eyes, shudder and touch and watch them be so fucking gentle with each other.  So sweet and so fucking close and saying the nicest shit, _I love you I’d never leave you we were meant for each other I love you_ I love you—

Orgasms, you figure out, after a couple messy searches that finally get results when you get it to something like _LjdfkjJLWhaT hwnE YoU tOUchH YoufRSEfl nd fELs ReALly gOod//?_ Wow okay, what the fuck.  More than any possible shit you have ever said it about, which is _motherfucking saying something_ …miracles.  That.  That was.  Wnhhnnnnghhh.

That’s about the noise your thinkpan makes for like an hour and a half after, and then you finally get yourself up a little and set out to see if you can’t bring that miracle to happening again.

You go deeper, more videos, looking for what you need, looking for more good feeling—you forget to eat a pie when the moons come up like you normally get to doing.  And at the end of the day as the moons start to light up the dimming sky and you not sleeping at-fucking-all, you find…something else.

You find a troll huddled up in chains, spread out and naked.  Pulls at the chains and you imagine how you’d be held still for touching and feel that feeling your starting to get acquainted with, that gasping twitch up and down your insides.   

And then another fucker comes out from the edge of the picture and they start screaming and saying _no, no please_ and your good feeling turns sour at the edges. 

You watch pain happen with eyes that water at how good you feel, and see their face as they thrash in misery and feel like you’re gonna lose what little you got in your acid sac right now.  The blade slices up through flesh and there’s screaming and the blood is blue but it’s close enough to your caste as no fucking matter and you gasp out a curse and you feel like you’re so close you can taste sweet white light on your tongue but—

…but you don’t want to be that poor fucker, locked up and hurt and scared.  You feel a sorrow and hurting for them, like the dumb fucker you are. You want that warm touch, the way those two in the second video looked at each other, but the more you watch the more you find that not happening.  The more you find it can’t be the both.  You can’t be hurt and loved both.  Even hated, the real pitch way, you wouldn’t be hurt like that. 

But you watch them put their claws between each other’s legs, joke that they’ll dig them in and you want to see them do it. 

\--

“What the fuck?” says the brother you’re tangled up around, and digs his claws the deeper in his shock.  Deeper still when your head goes back and your breath sighs and moans out of you.  “What the _fuck?!”_

 _“Please,_ ” you breathe, and he pulls his claws away like you burned him and stares at you.  “Hnnf—nn, no, come on—motherfucker c’mon please ‘m so close—”

\--

 _"Welcome on the_  Dark Carnival, _you rowdy little freaks_ ,” purrs the Grand Highblood, and when he leans forward and down and looks at you all, you can see muscles work up his arms and through his back, and you swallow hard and even through the foggy sopor haze you feel your throat dry.  You dig your claws in your own legs and lick your lips. “... _we're gonna show you fuckers_ _how we_ own the galaxy.”

\--

“You dumb little FUCKER!”  howls the Grand Highblood, and he _hits_ you, slaps you full across the face and even through the fuzzy ache in your eyes that _hurts._   You groan and laugh all breathless and he growls.  “Do you have _any GODDAMN_ MOTHERFUCKING IDEA how fucking STRONG that shit is?!  If I _ever_ see you fucked up on this stuff again or hear a motherfucking _WORD_ about it, I’m gonna TEAR YOU LIMB FROM MOTHERFUCKING MESSIAH-DAMNED _LIMB!!_ ”

You imagine that in the dark heat behind your eyes, whimper just once and pass the fuck out.

\--

“What?”  You sit up a little straighter, and she looks away a bit, not quite at you.  “Wh’s—what you heard—?”

“Just that…I dunno, brother.”  She shrugs.  “That you might do something weird.  No clue.”

You play normal as you know how and then reach down in the blind moment as she comes and dig your claws in your own flesh and it’s guilty and hot and wet, shameful in the dark.  Good feeling stolen unknowing.  You smile at her the next night and go back to your own ship and cry all night alone in your block and don’t know quite why.

\--

“You bend real good at the wrists,” says the Grand Highblood half-laughing, and pushes back and you feel your bones creak with just the twist of his hand.  If you pushed back—if you…

It’s sudden and mad and stupid.  You bite your lip and do it anyway.

\--

Your name is Kurloz Makara and

Well

Fuck.


	4. Passion Before Frenzy ((M: explicit sex))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love writing scenes of intense emotion from Kurloz's point of view. From Gamzee's POV Kurloz's thoughts are a complete mystery because he's so good at hiding what he feels like.
> 
> I thought this was a good scene to try it with. ;) Chapter 12, the first time actual fucking takes place. obviously, v v nsfw.

“…I want to fuck you.”

Gamzee’s eyes go so wide.

He’s silent for so long you start at doubting yourself, so long you’re writing up his denials and unwillingness in your pan even though you’ve never had a hint that he wouldn’t want, he’s always said—

“…if…”

His voice is so small, tiny and faltering.  Your pusher doubles its beating.  He licks his lips, swallows hard, breathes.  “…if I can walk for all the whole night after you’re done with me,” he says, and he looks up at you and you see in his face he’s scared like you are, _excited_ like you are.  “…brother I swear to all fucking gods and messiahs I’m gonna be  _so_  motherfucking disappointed at you.”

For a second you can’t get your recall on how to breathe.  Then it sinks in, slow as moonrise.  _Yes._   He said _yes_.

You’re going to fucking _ruin_ him.

 “ _If you walk for a_ week _after I’m done with you,_ “ you say, and your whole body is starting on a slow burn now, you can feel it thrum out in your chatterbox and growl in the air so deep and soft you can’t hardly credit it as yourself.  “...I’m  _gonna be so motherfucking disappointed at_ myself.”

You kiss him then, deep and sweet and thankful and loving at him, and he whimpers and kisses you back with motherfucking frenzy.  His hands grope at you, holding on—his hips rut up sharp and helpless against yours and you have to laugh and reach down to hold him, keep and calm him a little.  This will be a passion, but not a frenzy, no.  You’ve planned and dreamed for too fucking long.  You’ve wanted too deep to let this be just a rut in the dark against a wall. 

Those can come later.

 “Slow down, little brother,” you say, and back him up against the wall, crowd him down until his precious slight body is pressed hard to the metal.  He breathes, shallow little things, fighting at the weight of you, pinned and helpless and pretty.  He closes his eyes and breathes you in, and you fucking _hunger_ for him.  “ _Slow down._ “  And it’s half said to yourself.

“…but…” he squirms and you hold him still so he whines at you.  “-- _come on_ , motherfucker--fucking around with me right  _now_  you asshole--”

  Frustrates so easy, your little on.  “Just want to make this last,” you say, like you ain’t even aware how fucking bad he  _wants._ You start in to stripping him and watching him come slowly naked is so fucking hot you can’t hardly stand it.  You have him stand still and take it and that’s the greater part of how hot you find it; watching him twitch and blush as you strip him.

It’s not until you’re starting to clean his face off and he really opens his mouth to snap at you that you shove his shirt in his mouth and shut him up.  He glares at you, all affront and motherfucking offense.  You press your finger shushing over his stretched mouth and he glowers.  But you…can’t quite see his bare face, and you want to.  Want to see how he looks, be able to read him, _control_ this, make it perfect.  Time to walk on in.  Time to take the steps you know you need to.

You lead him through to your pailing block, and you hear him stop a second and shudder, hear his breath shake at the sight of platform and your box of pailing toys.  You come and sit down there, and he comes to you, a little, quiet thing, hesitating steps.  You take him and reel him in, bring him up on your lap and take handfuls of his ass, give it a good pinch and squeeze and make him shiver and then, because he’s gotta fuckin’ learn sometime, you leave off touching him and go back to scrubbing his paint.

He makes the cutest little whimper through the gag and tries to rub his bulge on your thigh, but you hold his hip with one hand and keep him from moving.  He grunts and tries to reach for the gag—well, can’t be having with that.  “ _Don’t you fucking_ dare,” you tell him, and pull his hands away.  “You don’t wanna know what I would do to you, little one.”  ( _How long could you keep him tied up and crying to come, could you make him pass out of needing—_ )  He makes a snarky noise and you laugh at how offended he is and drag your claws down his ribs too light to hurt.  He’s…so small.

“… _could crush you_ ,” you say, and squeeze him.  You can feel him _creak_ , so breakable-small under your hands, and he gasps. “ _…just a little squeeze.  Break you, just like that._ ”  You dig your claws in and he cries out and arches up, all ready for you.  “… _you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”    I could make my claws meet through you and every precious brittle piece of you would snap like it wasn’t ever even motherfucking there and you’d love every second_.”

You pull his head back and feel his curls tangled in your fingers like silk, look at the trembling, needy arch of him.  Precious little one. 

“…this is going to _hurt,_ ” you say, and he whimpers and trembles, he’s so close, such a needy little bitch for your touch and when you bite down on his throat and tear at his back he screams as loud as he ever has and thrashes, pants and chokes up against your chest.  The gag makes his voice an open cry, a little scream with every breath as you dig in his back—you pull it out, and he is so small and his voice is such a sweet agony. 

“…see?” you let go of his hands so he can touch himself and he gets hold of his bulge and thrusts his fingers up in his nook with little whimpers that make your bulge ache, writhing on your lap, turning and twisting and working at himself with both hands like a desperate little pail-slave.  “…can’t savor a moment.  Fucking wriggler.”

You get up and leave him there to get ready—by the time you come back he’s laid out and shaking, his bulge is still half-out and you want to bite his soft thighs, slap his ass until he squeaks and whimpers, put needles in the soft backs of his knees and make him sob.  But you sit and hold him up to you again instead.  When he looks up to you, surprise to you, he looks with a frown with his trembling lips. 

“…what the fuck?” he asks, and you raise your eyebrows at the ungrateful in his tone.  And then you remember your promise, your plan, and you know what he wants.  “Thought you said you’d—”

You put your palm on his nook and _push_ and he lets out this wonderful high _scream_ as you pull him close and grind it up against him, all the callouses of your palm against his slick, soft nook, and feel it twitch and clench and your bulge aches and _aches_ and you want to pound him down so hard he can’t even scream anymore.

“… _just getting you warmed up, little one,_ ” you say, and he chirps and mewls and mouths at your chest, soft lips and cold fangs against your scars.  “…gotta get you _relaxed,_ good and ready.”  You stroke his nook with a few fingers, and he’s open and wet and ready for you, he spreads his legs and squeaks and moans for your touch. 

“ _Do it,_ ” he pleads, and you love how he needs you, how he cries out when you pinch mercilessly at the softness of the base of his bulge.  _Fuck_ , you can’t take this, can’t even fucking _bear_ it, you reach down and finally touch your bulge and god, god god that feels so _fucking good._   He knows you’re touching yourself, not fucking him—he cries out, twists around and struggles and cries out again when you hold him still.  “—motherfuckin’ do it, _do it, do it_ —”

“Patience,” you tell him, and he gasps and then _growls_ at you.

“I did patience!” he gasps out, and you laugh because oh, the wriggler thinks a sweep is patience, the wriggler is so small and precious and doesn’t even get his motherfucking know on yet.  “Been patient to fucking hell and back, I did patience, come on—!”

…but you do love him so, and he has been such a good boy, and your bulge fucking _throbs_ for using and you haven’t ever been able to deal with his begging, his shameless wanton _pleading._   You breathe your deepest, and you let your bulge slide the first small bit into his nook and instantly he chokes off, and holy shit you feel him clench up tight and _ripple_ and even with the barest press of his flesh on your bulge yet it makes you want to sigh your satisfaction. 

And then you catch the look on his face, all tense and worrying and looking hard on you and only you, you see how he trembles and you force yourself to come to a pause.

 “If I really am all tearing at you inside,” you say, and you see him try to attend, see him bite his lips and listen while his body shudders for you, his flesh clenches and wants for you.  “If I’m hurting you in some way actually won’t be fixed, you _tell me_.”  He huddles down a little at that, and you smile at his sweet heart and turn his face up with a finger to kiss him.  “... _I_ like _your nook_ ,” you tell him, breath of his breath, and let your bulge at him a little more, enough you start to feel it tight, enough you feel his breathing hitch and catch against your lips.  “… _I want to get a lot more use out of it.  Don’t like to break my favorite toys._ ”

He makes a noise that twists you up like a knot inside and goes twisting around again, whimpering words he probably don’t even hear all _yes yes_ fuck _oh fuck yes…_ and you laugh at his eagerness and bite him hard all up and down his neck, brutal bites, merciless pain. You get him _shaking_ that way,  and _god_ but he’s so small, so _tight_ and every time you shift he clenches even tighter and you can feel you won’t get into him like that, you won’t get much further, not without hurting the both of you.  You tell him to relax and he nods but it don’t do much good—well, the wriggler does get so excited.  You can see the ache grow slow in his face with every finger’s-breadth deeper you let yourself go, and it’s all you got in you not to just let your bulge _lash_ inside him and watch it _break_ him.

Instead, you stop and take his horns in both hands.  He squeaks as you squeeze, and then the noise becomes a soft little groan and he loosens, lets another little bit of you in _fuck fuck fuck_ it’s almost _painful_ he’s so tight and you can hear him whimpering pain on each and every breath with the feeling of you. 

And then the first one of your pleasure nodes slides inside the tight silk cool of him and you curse and thrust at him without thought or reason and he _howls_ , a jagged little gasping thing only as long as he has breath for.  You gotta work at getting yourself under control and you don’t come but you get closer than you planned on for fucking sure.  You’re just barely back to controlled when Gamzee shifts on your bulge again, pressing down on you, and the move of his hips is the clearest of _FUCK ME PLEASE FUCK ME_ and he is beautiful. 

“…okay,” you say, and you have to hold him hard to keep  him from riding down on you, constricting your bulge in the dripping-slick ripple of his nook.  “You asked for it.”

You fuck into him hard and he _screams_ , tosses his head back and heaves his thorax for breath.  You can feel new, just-warmer wetness on you and you wonder if he’s bleeding.  You take his bulge in one hand, toy with it and then pinch the tip, stroke it, rub a calloused thumb over the sensitive skin at the end  and he jerks like you’re killing him, weeps from too much good feeling and pain as you play with him.  He shudders like he’s coming, once, but it keeps on after he’s got no more to give, keeps on and on and on as he lies up against you, limp for your hands, helpless for your using, beautiful and fucking perfect and _tight_ , fuck, _fuck—_

You know yourself for the noises you make— _fuck, little one, messiahs take me oh god Gamzee_ fuck _—_ and the little sounds of his agony and eagerness have your arms around him, squeezing him close and tight, you’re holding him so tight your fronds tremble and shake, your bones creak and his flesh bruises under your fingers and he cries on and on and on, endless noises, disbelieving and wondering and pitiful-helpless. 

And then it’s done.

You lie there still for a second and it’s every single FUCKING bit of your control not to move, it’s enough a struggle you could fucking _cry_ but when you look down at him he’s leaned up in your shoulder, still, not moving, hardly breathing, and worry hits you even over the motherfucking _glory_ he’s doing on your bulge, the too-tight smoothness of him and the trembles going up and down and through him.  He lifts up his head after a second—looks at you, and his eyes are like glass, his mouth hangs a crack open, his jank-ass gillflaps so like yours rise and spread and try to get air through gills that just ain’t there.  He’s in bits.  He’s broken to pieces.  He’s _beautiful_.

He’s gone.

“Gamzee,” you say, and it’s more a groan than words, but you don’t think he has the panmatter to notice now.  You lift yourself up a little and the both of you gasp and shake.  “ _Nhh—_ Gamzee.  _Gamzee._ ”

He stares at you and through you, takes those deep, fast little breaths and makes a little noise.  Tiny weeping chirr of affection, dying-animal weak.  Doesn’t see you, and there’s a fear in you now, there’s an awful fear that makes you reach for his shoulders and shake him a little, give a squeeze.  “Gamzee, fucking hell, _talk to me_ little brother.”

He groans, long and low and out of breath—you touch his face and feel sweat and tears and drool and blood all mixing, his hair stuck to his slick skin, his lip swelling and bloody from biting. 

“Gamzee!”

He blinks at the raising of your voice, blinks again and then groans.  You wait as he shifts a little at a time—as his eyes slowly come to focus, move around and settle on your face.  You can’t have broken him beyond fixing, you _can’t_ , you’d fucking die, you wouldn’t be able to live anymore and he just sits and stares and—

“ _…mmm_ ,” says Gamzee, tiny and weak and trembling, and his breathing is a little struggle, he shakes to get the air.  “… _mmm…_ more.”  He takes another breath—voice comes back stronger, and he shifts himself just so slightly and you bite your cheek and don’t move, _don’t move._   “…Good—“ and then needy and louder, “ _More!_ ”

Holy shit.

The worry leaving is like a renewing of the pleasure ten times over and you drop your head and laugh a little, sigh out the fear like a poison you can breathe away.  You touch his face, and this time when you touch his cheek he turns a little into your hand, when you touch his swelling lip he sighs and _shivers_ , shivers around your bulge and you can feel the rippling _living_ moving inside him and your legs shake for a second.  “Don’t fucking scare me like that,” you tell him, and he gasps as his nook moves without his intention, his body tortures him as much as you do and it’s so fucking beautiful you can’t breathe.

“ _More,_ ” he begs you, and you lose it, for just a second your bulge moves out of your control and he _keens_ just from that, shudders around looking for something to touch, something to hold on tight to, to let the pleasure shaking through him come out—“fuck oh god _more more MORE—_ ”

You laugh to think of your worry—for all the hard lessons of pleasure you’ve learned of him, haven’t you learned even more that there’s no pain that hurts him?  Haven’t you learned, Kurloz?  Don’t you ever fuckin’ learn?  You lean in on him and find the places you put your teeth in his neck, lick up the copper-sweet of his blood and you feel his bulge slide in worn-out needing over your belly, pinned between the two of you and over-used and _vulnerable_ , he’s so wide open for you.

“…greedy little wriggler,” you say into his neck, and you stroke his skin, steel yourself up for what you’re about to do, breathe deep and find your control.  “…give me cause to all think like I’ve fucking _broken_ you and then that’s all as what you have to say for yourself?  Not even asking nicely, you little shit.”  You move and he _screams_ , oh messiahs but he screams so pretty for you, his nook clenches on you like slick silk and you don’t even know if he hears you but you do it again, _again_. “… _let’s hear you then._ ”

“ _Hurts—!_ ” the word bursts out of him, this great howling sob like a sinner driven beyond his wits, and he can’t get words out straight, they’re in fits and starts and shaky whimpers and screams— “— _good_ , god _yes_ yesyesyes—I—c-can’t I, I, I—you’re, fucking—“  he sobs as you move again, grit your teeth and push up against the front of his nook, the soft skin there where his globes are and the word is a whine, he’s out of air and can’t get more, you’re _wrecking_ him, you’re— “— _killing_ me I need it hardercome on _hurt_ me _—_ ”

 _Fuck,_ fuck fuck fuck something this good, something this _perfect_ , it can’t be right, it must be a sin, you must be _damned_ for how he shakes and pleads and you grind up against him and he writhes on your lap and you lose your breath, your head goes snapping back at the feeling.  His eyes are on your face, he rocks against you on purpose, this slow, sliding pressure on all the places that make your eyes see lights that ain’t there, and your voice cracks like a pupa’s, your saying of his name is almost a plea. 

He leans in and kisses you sudden and deep and you didn’t know you were hungering for his sweet mouth but you know it now so sudden it hurts and you kiss him back, roll your hips and taste his gasps and sighs.  Your hands been nothing but an anchor, squeezing on his hips—you leave behind the bruising marks of your fingers and move up, take his grubscars in your claws and twist them hard, put your claws under his gill-slits and force them too wide open to dig at them, pull his hair, dig your claws at his horns and maybe he comes again then because his nook does something fucking _glorious_  around you and you cry out as he does, hands faltering, so close and too far gone and _not yet not yet—_

“ _Wait,_ ” he gasps, and it takes you a second to even make of the word what it is. 

You have never had a harder challenge than you do then stopping yourself, but his voice is soft in your ear _wait, w-_ ahh—!  W-wait—wait—and you stop yourself and breathe.

“…you…okay?”  The words grit out of you hard and harsh with effort, and he gives half a laugh and braces himself up, tries to pull himself together again and then whimpers when you still yourself in him, begging _don’t stop don’t_ stop _, just—_ just—

You wait until he gets it back together, until he fits the bits of himself whole again enough to start, “— _how—_ ” and then you rub back up against the front of his nook again and he yelps and moans and loses it, precious and helpless, crumples at your moving like a puppet with his strings in your hands.  You do that four times before he gets pissed off and growls at you and you retaliate by lifting up his bulge out of your way and snapping a claw hard and sharp against the most main of his pleasure nodes right at the base of his bulge.  He _howls_ and tightens so hard and fast it shoves your breath right out your aeration sponges, your claws dig in his flesh so hard more blood coats your fingers.  For a time, neither of you says a word.

… _what,_ ” he tries again, weak and small and shaky, and you pet his sides and he shivers and calms a little.  “…wh-what…’s feel like?”

Asking the hard questions now, is he?  You raise your eyebrows at him and smirk a little and then hiss through your teeth as his nook twitches, as the tight opening rubs up on you right where you just flicked him to make him scream.  _Fuck_. 

“… _what do you feel like,_ ” you say, and your breath don’t want to obey you but you make it so, force it in and out, calm.  He asked on you to wait and you will fucking _wait_ if it kills you, which right this second it feels like it might.  You reach out and touch his belly and he whimpers and then wails as you push—fucking hell you can feel your bulge through his flesh, you press and his body bears down on you and you can _feel_ your own flesh twist inside him with your bare hands.  Fucking hell, fuck fuck _fuck._   “How does this— _feel,_ huh?”

“ _Please,_ ” he moans, and he’s pitiful and you’re close so _close_ but not yet not yet not yet.  You go back to hurting him, hands on his skin, finding out the soft places of him and clawing them, pinching them, twisting them, squeezing him so he groans.  His thighs are all atremble where they’re wrapped around yours, and every time he shivers around your bulge your toes curl and your own nook throbs and he’s so pretty when he cries, the ugliness and need of him in his desperation are so beautiful.  Getting the words together to answer his question takes a long time—you amuse yourself for that span by making him plead and shake and sob wretched for more.

“… _smooth as fuck,_ ” you say finally, and he jumps like he forgot the question and then cries out when you touch his bulge again—he flinches up on his knees, off you a little, but his knees give out and he sinks back down and you keep hold of his bulge and try not to let out a hungry groan at his pointless little struggles.  Your mouth keeps going, now you’re started, words straight from your bulge and the cool, aching tightness of him. “… _all around me, it’s_ so easy _making you move for me, little one,_   _I feel you_ shake _inside for me  when I just…”_ and you squeeze his bulge, let go, squeeze and let go and make him clench down around you like he’s a toy, a tool for your use, like he’s there to be used for pleasuring you and nothing else and he sobs and shakes and you want to kiss him, your breath comes faster and harder and you’re shaking almost as he is now. 

“ _—face when you cry, all twisted up and helpless,_ helpless _, so fucking helpless to stop me—_ ” you let go of his bulge and dare to go further down and you feel the root of your bulge and you feel his battered, stretched-bloody nook around you and when you stroke that flesh he makes the most beautiful fucking noise you have ever heard in your goddamn life, spiraling up into a scream as you keep touching him, fingers slick and wet.  “ _—can feel you bleeding,_ ” you tell him, and he’s blinking hard and fast, his eyes are wide and dark and won’t focus, he’s at the end of what he can do for you and he’s so beautiful, he’s so fucking beautiful and he trusts you so much and his sweet little body is all broken by your hands and you grit your fangs together and try not to sob at how fucking close you are, at how it almost _hurts_ to feel so good—

“… _K…_ ” Gamzee gasps, and you thought he was long since too far gone to make words but the sound was there.  When you open your eyes he’s looking back at you, he’s covered in sweat and blood and drool and slurry and you can see the beautiful obscene stretch of him around your bulge, can see the bruises and swollen tendernesses where you played with him, can see the last of him falling apart for you.  “ _K…’loz…_ ”

“ _Oh,_ ” you say, and it breaks like a sob and you’re falling, you’re losing yourself to the gods themselves—“Oh, _but you’ll be the motherfucking death of me, love._ ” You move him, pull him around unheeding of him and desperate and bite and kiss and grind up into him and he gasps just the smallest “ _ah—_!” and clenches down on you one last time and you bury your face in his hair and let white light and ecstasy slam over you like an endless wave.


	5. Stupid Fucking Purplebloods ((M: nonexplicit sex))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's one thing Kurloz enjoys about going to shitty saltlicker parties, it's making them all stare and blush and glub like fish out of water. Sure, it's humiliating, but then again if there's one thing Meenah enjoys about bending her Grand Highblood over a table in front of an entire party, it's watching him be humiliated.
> 
> Everybody wins.

She leaves it for after the first four courses, as everyone is just starting to relax, pleasantly drunk on the best soporific drinks in the empire.  At least, relax as much as it’s possible to relax with that… _filth_ sitting up at the high table, tossing his horns and showing his fangs and purposely baring his throat to the whole hall.  Purpleblood slut.

It’s not an entirely accurate insult, you know that—many of them are, but that particular purpleblood has never been rumored to pail indiscriminately like most of them do.  Not a single contribution to the drones since his status rendered him above the need to donate. 

He just follows his orders.  Any orders.

She leaves it for the first four courses before she inclines her head to him, and the purpleblood moves immediately, silently, still smiling, not looking anywhere but at her.  The conversation rises a little, strained at the edges, as he slinks over to her chair in fluid, noiseless steps and sinks down by her feet as gracefully as any bowing court member. 

She reaches down and touches his face, and for a moment, watching out of the corner of your eye, you think the debauchery this time is going to be pale.  Then her hand shifts slowly forward and back, forward and back, and you realize her fingers are in his mouth, incautious of fangs that could tear out any throat at this party without an effort.  He seems to have his eyes closed—he lets her finger-fuck his mouth without protest.

You put a bite of perfectly juicy-rare hoofbeast steak in your mouth and chew desperately.

“How has trade been, my lord?”  you say to your neighbor—he’s staring straight ahead and down, eyes never quite flicking all the way to the main table.  He jumps a little and laughs mechanically, automatically.  Behind him as he turns his head, the empress says something quietly, laughs and pulls her fingers away wet. 

Her purpleblood licks his spit-slick lips and although his paint makes it hard to read his face, you think you see him smiling.  He says something in return, lips barely moving.  Whatever it is, it makes the empress let out a peal of delighted laughter, head thrown back.  For a second, everyone is deadly silent, frozen—then she responds, giggling quietly, and conversation surges back.  Looking?  Listening?  Nobody is, of course, doing either of those things.

Not after what happened to the last dumb fucker who pointed out how fucking disgraceful this debauchery is.

She leans back in her chair, grabbing a plate of breaded gobblefiend wings—he leans forward, head on her thigh, and goes still.  Her hand is possessive—threatening—on his throat, and any other troll would be asking to have their neck broken one-handed.  But he just sits by her chair, watching you all through lazy, hooded eyes. 

Every so often she’ll lean down a little and feed him a piece of meat with her fingers—he takes far too long to lick the grease from the meat off her perfectly-manicured claws.  His tongue is long and slick and black and has a glinting gold stud in it.  You make desperate conversation with your neighbor, who returns the favor gratefully. 

Another course gone, and they’re bringing out the stronger drinks now.  She holds one down and tips it back—he drinks deep and grins, open and wide this time, not the carefully-judged smirk he uses on the rest of you.  Your neighbor, who has been desperately imbibing, makes a sort of pained whimpering noise as the empress takes a handful of the purpleblood’s hair and tugs, guiding him around in front of her chair and spreading her legs wide to drape them over his broad, sharp shoulders.  One hand goes back to ferrying candied ganderbulbs and wine-marinated eel tongue from plate to mouth—the other one closes in her purpleblood’s hair as she rocks her hips against his face and grins at all of you. 

 _You_ wish _you were me_ , says that grin, and you can smell pheromones and frustration in the air.  Her oldest advisors sit on either side of her down the head table, calmly eating and apparently not in the least fazed.  One of them even leans over to the empress and says something to her, cocking her head down at the purpleblood—the empress snorts and nods and then leans her head back, closing her eyes.  The expression is one of wicked pleasure, lip curled, tongue sliding over her fangs. 

After another ten long minutes, she seems to have enough of his mouth.  She pulls back on his hair until he pulls back, taking deep breaths. 

She beckons, and for the first time he hesitates—his face is turned away, but tension flickers through his body.  A second later, though, he’s standing.  His face is impassive as he turns, sliding back into her lap so her chin fits into the crook of his shoulder.  Her fangs trace the line of his stunted cervical gills, and for a moment his teeth flash in the light, bared and clenched, holding in any incriminating sound. 

He shifts his weight—grinds slowly up against her bulge like—like a cheap fucking _concupiscent hire_ in a shitty club.  For the first time, there’s an almost inaudible susurrus around the room.  No individual face or mouth seems to move, but there’s the slightest hint of a scandalized murmur.   The empress just grins and runs her hands slowly down his thorax to his hips, framing the tailored lines of his powerful chest and the narrow cut of his waist. 

Their eyes both sweep the room—his hooded and dark, satisfied and mocking, hers glittering and gleeful.

And then there’s a split second of motion and a loud _thud_ and she’s on her feet.  The purpleblood hits the table, and for a moment every single person in the block tenses, eyes widening, hands twitching for weapons.  The purpleblood resists for a moment, jerking like he’s going to throw off her hand—then, slowly, he goes still.  His body goes limp.

The empress laughs, not a noise as much as a sharp jerk of her shoulders, and shoves his pants down.  Nothing of the skin she bares is visible from the angle of the other diners, but her expression is clear—she looks hungry, teeth bared in a vicious grin.  Her hips roll forwards against his and her hand closes in his hair, arcing his neck back and turning his face up as she pulls back and slams forward into him so sharply his whole body seizes and jerks, tensing like a bow.

For the first time, the purpleblood makes a sound—a low, almost subsonic rumbling groan in his thorax.  You shiver as a frisson of instinctive, animalistic fear runs up your spine, and simultaneously clenches your nook with entirely involuntary lust.  His face is obscene in its open pleasure.  His mutant landdweller fins flare and flutter as she bares her teeth, letting out a possessive, full-throated snarl.  His thorax heaves in long, slow breaths.  The empress twines her fingers around one horn and he shivers.

She looks up from him and bites her lip and whatever she does, he groans again.  Her eyes sweep across the room, and you see other heads bow and don’t look down from the spectacle fast enough.  For one long, agonizing, terrifying second, you meet her eyes, and you can’t look away.

She fucks him until he can’t stay silent anymore—still controlling himself, teeth clenched on grunts and moans, but huffing out sharp pants of air every time she rolls her hips against his.  She doesn’t bother with a bucket, just moans long and loud and decadent and comes in him instead.  She doesn’t bother to make him come after she’s done, and he either isn't allowed to do so himself or chooses to maintain what dignity he has left by refusing to touch himself.  He just cleans himself up, straightens his clothes slow and steady and just the slightest touch shaky.  There's the barest hint of a wince of pleasure and discomfort as he settles back in his seat, but a moment later he's leaning back as indolently as before, eating a piece of fish with his fingers. 

Your nook aches, almost as badly as his must right now.  Your bulge chafes at the inside of your pants. 

You fucking hate that purpleblood.

 


	6. What Could Be ((M: explicit, fucked-up dream sex))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for dub-con (masochistic) sexual torture and orgy, and hints of sexual slavery. Fucked-up dreams ahoy. U_U

It’s a perigee after your little one comes to you begging pain for the first time your dreams start to change.

The daymares are old now.  Practiced, roads you’ve been walking for sweeps on sweeps.  That echoing, leering spectre of you stalks through them and whispers in your ear and makes mockery of what you love and you banish him off again and again and wake cold and breathing so hard in your slime. 

Those days, you’ve learned, you go and do some other shit.  If you go straight back to sleep, it’s back down in the dream you go.  It’s back to the cold and the fucking _helplessness._  

You ain’t been _helpless_ in an age.  Not a hundred sweeps.  Not but in your pan at daytime, with that voice whispering blasphemy in your pan.

You walk the chapel today, in the dark and quiet of your dreams.  There’s a congregation there, faded and far off, hands raised.  It’s peace.  It’s soft and warm.  Someone’s at your shoulder—familiar like that, so close and cool, has to be Gamzee.  You’d reach for his hand, but you’re walking now.  Just peace.  A good dream, this one time, walking through the congregation with their bared heads.  Through the raised hands and painted wrists.

Far away, a single soft voice urges you there’s something you should be noticing.  But you’re in your chapel, in with your family.  They turn to you and bow their heads and raise their hands in reverie to you.

 _Can we start?_ A voice real soft behind you.  They got no need to wait on you to start worship, and you must tell them so because they stand and lok forward, up to the front.  Are you preaching?  You don’t have a sermon ready, but that ain’t a thing to fear, you’re not green little wriggler. There’s a body spread out on the altar.  Small and pale and its face seems bare—you move closer, feel the one behind you stick close to your shoulder.  A lowblood up there probably, there for bleeding out on—

It’s Gamzee.

It’s him, your little one, your matesprit, tied spread and flat on the altar, chained at all four fronds and bright with gold.  You go still.  Can’t move.  That cold presence is still at your back and as you watch still and frozen the congregation eases on up to him, all murmurs and hands.  He’s got no covering beside scraps of cloth, red and green—they’re lifted away.  He’s bare and thin and shaking all over, and you can’t see his face.  He lies head turned away, but you know it’s him.  You know.

 _Won’t you partake,_ Brother?  The voice behind you and everywhere, and you recognize it and you know that you’ve been pulled down again.  Swallowed up.  _You want to.  You_ want _him._

They take Gamzee like ants on a corpse.  Hands cover him up, pull and pinch and twist and claw at him.  A head bows between his legs to lap at his nook and he arches up to the touch and then squeaks as hands take his bulge and pull, not bothering to coax at it to come out, fingers spreading his sheath, claws teasing at the flesh.

For a second you’re someone else, a cold smile, a blasphemous eye, and you see him with a look not like your own— _he doesn’t squirm half as much anymore,_ it whispers inside you (he whispers behind you), _he’s learning his way out of his wriggler blushes._

Your precious beloved cries out high and reedy-thin with need as another head fits in between his legs, hands and horns and mouths pushing his legs apart further so the second can bury fangs in the base of his bulge.  Your spine shivers hellfire.  Your nook aches as he whimpers.  You can’t see his face, beyond the barest corner of his jaw as he turns away, twisting and squirming and gasping.  You don’t see any paint.

 _Sometimes he gets so overwhelmed, our precious little one,_ says the voice of your damnation, and you stand frozen and watching as hands cover him, play with him, sink in claws and twist and tease.   _Sometimes he cries_ mercy, mercy, _like he wasn’t gifted with hunger for eternity and more._  

He screams, open cry like a song, when hands pry open his gill-slits and they take small things to him, little glittering things in the unbearable softness of flesh under the dud flaps.  They touch every part of him.  Their hands cover his eyes and mouth.  _Brother Immortal,_ they murmur to him, and a hand lays a harsh slap on the soft inside of his thigh, and you see the tip of his bulge is pierced, leashed on short chain to the nub at its base so a move of one makes a tug at the other.  So it’s never fully sheathed, open for playing with.

 _As Rage subjugated Mercy,_ Immortal whispers, and he goes past you, enters the scene, waves the ones between your boy’s legs away and steps in himself, and you know what he’s going to do and you can’t move.   _He could have been_ yours, _Kurloz._  And Gamzee arches up and spreads his legs out wide, trembles and gasps as your double gives his nook two long, slow thrusts with fingers heavy and cold with gold.  _Always willing, always ready.  Bowed to our whims, following holy Mercy's footsteps,_  submitting.  He reaches down easy, plays with bulge and nook both a second and watches your little one writhe and pant through his nose. 

_You like it like this, don’t you little messiah-bringer?_

They kiss his hands and feet, and you don’t see what their hands do in the wake of their kisses but it makes him sob and his bulge lashes in Immortal’s hand as he murmurs his hungry blasphemies to the shaking shell of your beautiful, sweet, bright-eyed boy.

_Nights here, hungry for every ache and twinge, panting every sermon for what pain you’re granted_

Gamzee’s head lolls to you, and his face is twisted in pleasure and tear-streaked and empty from too-much-to-bear

 _…and at days, when they’ve all had their way with you, back to my block for some shackles less giving and cruelty more_ keen  _and maybe I'll let you come even, little holy one, just for me_

and there’s a moan and a whimper in his throat as Immortal’s bulge slides into him and the others around kiss him and bite him and leave bruises and burning nicks on his skin, and the sick lurch in your gut is only as strong as the throb and burn of _want_.

_OURS._

His lips are soft and bloody and spanned with purple stitches.

_MINE._

You wake up with a half a shout as every muscle in you shudders and the sound of his sweet voice in a moan through tight stitches has you gasping and arching up and coming so hard you could almost shake apart.

You lie there after and you shake and if your eyes burn and ache and your thorax is tight and hot, if you _hate_ yourself right then so strong you could tear at your throat and finish it—

Nobody’s there to see.  Not your congregation, not Gamzee, not…

You can still feel how it was to be Him, how you looked on your matesprit’s body like meat you could use for your pleasure and nothing more or less, and you don’t sleep again that day, for the fear of what you could see (could _be_ ) if you do.


	7. The Grand Highblood is Dead (Long Live The Grand Highblood) ((E))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for thevasthonk on tumblr, who asked "Perhaps the story of how Kurloz came to power? Maybe what finally tipped him to fight the old man and the aftermath?"  
> Related, some context for the Cult of Flesh and Kurloz's first meeting with them.

 

Your name is Halore Travye, and you still care.

But you’ve ruined it, ruined it all with that sharp-eyed, brilliant troll you thought you’d have forever, so you sit far from him and half hidden, and just watch him some times and others.  Just check on him.  Just see how he carries himself, if he’s happy where he is and if there’s any serving you can render on him from where you are. 

You’ve seen him grow fast up ranks and through esteem of chaplains and the most hilariotous of murderous jokers, heard the whispers ( _so careful these nights, so careful to keep from spongeclots that shouldn’t hear)_ that there should be a new Grand Highblood in the Big Top.  One that shines fierce and young and hot like starshine, has a gleam in his eyes like knife’s edge and a fresh edge to his paint. 

He never answers a word to those whispers.  Just smiles and watches the Grand Highblood with those killing-sharp eyes. 

He’s not smiling now.

“ _His Hilarity’s gone off,_ ” somebody is whispering, and they don’t see you as you come closer, head down, focusing all you got on the not-noticed smallness of yourself.  You got a bit of a gift, being the one unseen.  Eyes go past you, sometimes.  It’s a knack.  They should know better than to talk treason in main ways where kin walk by—there’s a growing unrest in the family, sure, but not so big an unrest they should make themselves known for it.  He’s uncareful of family, these nights.  He hurts his cult and blood.

“ _—raids—_ ”  “— _a fight and he broke her jaw—”  “motherfucking violence on his own family—”_

“… _he’s_ excommunicating _,_ ” somebody whispers, and you know Kurloz’s shoulders when they go stiff and sharp at the words.  “ _…he says it waters purple blood down to quadrant out of fleet and he’s going through ranks digging out quadrant-signs—_ ”

“No,” says Kurloz, and stands hard and sharp.  “No, this won’t be born.  I’m fucking _ready_.”

“ _Ready?_ ” A sister, Sister Tischo if you know her right, “Ready for what, brother?” But you know already, and you know you can’t step in.  Can’t say a word.  From you, he won’t take them.  Your insides turn cold and aching.

“Ready to challenge,” Kurloz says, and whispers run wild out from him like the words sent out a shock.  “I’m ready for a motherfucking _promotion._ ”

\-- 

Your name is Kurloz Makara, and

And

Your name is Kurloz Makara, and you’re so tired.

So fucking tired.

You don’t know how long the fight went, but it feels like weeks, _perigees._   Lifetimes.  You died, time after time, every second you had to push yourself back up and keep moving, fighting, _breathing_ , you feel you killed some vital part just to keep on.  But here you stand.  Here you live. 

Your Grand Highblood lies dead at your feet, with his name till ringing round and round your auriculars like it was his last prayer. 

You pray.  You’re so tired, there’s fuck-all else to be done.

“ _The Grand Highblood,_ ” says sister Witnesse  real quiet.  “May he now be blessed as voice and body of the church.”

“Amen,” whisper the voices all around you, so close it might be one big voice that echoes around the room.  Your mouth tastes blood and salt.  Your gills work for water that ain’t there for them.  Everything hurts.  Your hands are bloody with the color of kin. 

The picture takes your pan again of the Grand Highblood—of Rakhem—turning his head away and bubbling out a breath as the knife touched his choke.  Was that his last rattle as you twitched your wrist to end him?  Was he gone before his blood coated over your skin?  Or did you…

Your eyes burn, and it ain’t from the overwork.  You keep them shut, and don’t let that burn become wet overflow.  Doesn’t matter.  Brother’s dead.  Long live the Grand Highblood, Kurloz Makara.

You thought you’d feel better than this.

“May he now be lifted up in power and regard,” Witnesse says by you.  You focus what you got on staying on your feet.  “Blessed in face of trials to come and beloved of kin.  Doing great harm and taking no motherfucking shit.”

“Amen.”

“May he get his know on, ever and always, what all the fuck he got here through and for and by, never losing his recall on the family and church that got him here.”

“Amen.”

“May he now get his royal ass to the doctorturers before he bleeds out all over his new throne room.”

A laugh—you can’t find you remember how right this second.  Your eyes keep blurring over, your head feels heavy.  “Amen,” a few say, laughing, and fronds take your arms and hold you up.  “Come brother—your lordship.  Sir, you gotta walk on up to get fixed.”

There are five of the oldest of the church around you when you collapse on a platform in the medbay, but you can’t tell who they are before your eyes go blurred and black at the edges.  You’re safe.  After all that long time of fighting, you’re safe.

Somebody touches your hand with the snapped fingers.  You pass the fuck out.

-

You’re all of a sweep out of your crowning when they come to you.

“Did you wonder why so many followed you when you had no proof of your worthiness yet made?” says a one.

“We made talk of you in high places,” says another, and the words are a sting.  How dare.  How motherfucking _dare,_ to put your hard-fought win on their own fronds, to say you showed no sign of deserving when your kin threw in with you and put their necks to the Handmaid’s needles for you?  How _dare._

“Who are you?” you ask them.

“We believe in you,” says a one.  “As you truly are.  The Holy Father.”

The name means fuck-all to you, but you can feel it coming for you.  Feel the chill of what messiahs are going to send to you.  The words send ice down your back.

“ _Who are you_.”

 “We are nameless,” says another.  “We honor you.  Father of messiahs’ bodies of flesh.”

“Never raised any wrigglers,” you say, from far off.  “No messiahs either.”

“Not this body of you,” says a one.  “Not as you are now but as you were sweeps on sweeps ago.  You are reborn.”

“ _For always, reborn,_ ” says the others.

“You are for always reborn to lead the church to glory,” says the one in the lead again, and looks to you with eyes that are burning mad.  “…Brother Immortal.”

\--

Your real kin come to you and find you bloody, sitting back and praying with your eyes closed tight and your face turned to the high ceiling.  _We are many,_ they said.  _We are nameless._

“…biggest brother?”

“ _…there’s heresy in our ranks,_ ” you say, and hear them breathe in sharp and know this is how your brother gone on fell to you.  Inquisition and cruelty to his family, that was what set the whispers going, what set his family against him and opened him up to challenge.  But what else could even deal with this shit?  What the _fuck_ else is to do?  “They call themselves nameless but I’ll give them their name for them, _Cult of Flesh._   Worshipping at imagined flesh-body troll-ass messiahs like it could ever be so.”

“…they believe the messiahs came to _troll_ form?”  Sister sounds shocked and sick as you did when the thought came to your pan.  You’re sorry she knows it now.  Sorry she has to think on that little bit of blasphemy, but you need her to know how harsh she’ll be forced to motherfucking be.

 “ _Find them,_ ” you say, and feel a terrible knowing settle on you, the feel of brother Rakhem’s blood cold on your fronds.  You’re set to kill your kin. 

You haven’t got the choice.

“ _Crush them out._ ”


End file.
